Soprano links of the week

First things first: I made a huge rookie mistake in yesterday's entry, suggesting that Clemenza was one of the victims of Michael Corleone's forces on the day of the christening, when of course Clemenza survives and is loyal to Michael. In my head, I was conflating Clemenza with both Tessio (who betrays the Family in "One") and Frankie Pentangeli from "Two," a character who was supposed to be Clemenza in early drafts of the script until the producers couldn't cut a deal with Richard Castellano to do the sequel.

Hey, if Christopher can make mistakes about those movies (he thought the wedding tradition was that the father of the bride could make any request of his guests, when the opposite was true), I'm allowed one or two, right?

On to the links...

In case you've missed its 17 airings already this week on HBO, HBO2, HBO West, HBO Signature, HBO9, HBO Kung Fu and all the other HBO digital offshoots, someone has posted the complete Making of "Cleaver" mockumentary on YouTube. (At least, it was up as of the writing of this post; HBO's attorneys may well have had it pulled by the time you try to click on it.)

Essentially, this is a DVD extra that's getting some play now instead of making you wait for the boxed set. Maybe I built it up too much in anticipation, but I think it could have been better. If nothing else, all the footage from actual "Sopranos" episodes where Christopher tries to get the movie made completely ruin the documentary effect. Better if they had just let Michael Imperioli and Ray Abruzzo (appearing in character as Chris and Little Carmine) give their own versions of what happened ("My friend Tony couldn't wait to come on board as a backer!") without having to show us the clips.

Elsewhere in the links, we once again have Matt Seitz's take on "Stage 5," and he dwells far longer on the Tony/Little Carmine scene than I was able to, going so far as to dub it "one of the most important scenes in the show's entire run."

The dream "wasn't a dream," Little Carmine explains to Tony. "It was about being happy." It's also about the foolishness of pursuing wealth, power and the approval of one's elders (or social betters) instead of actually living your life and enjoying each day as if it's a gift (even if, as Tony laments, the gift is a pair of socks).

A lot of people were struck by the episode's use of John Cooper Clarke's "Evidently Chickentown" over the final scenes. I've always been a big fan of David Chase's eclectic musical choices on the show, and I wrote a story last year about the origins of some of the best musical moments. Over at RollingStone.com, they had a similar idea this year, but they introduced video to the equation, showing clips of their choices, with Chase providing commentary. Proof of how well and how often the show uses music: only one song made both lists (Nils Lofgren's "Black Books," played at the finale of season three's "Second Opinion"), though a few of them came after I wrote my story. One of those, Carmela's "American Girl" monologue to a comatose Tony, is one of the best scenes in the show's history, and is worth the click through all by itself.